Radical Abolitionism through Self revelation…
Revue n° 19
10- Gilbert Hobbs Barnes, The Antislavery Impulse, 1830-1844 (New York: D.
Appleton- Century, 1933); Dwight Lowell Dumond, Antislavery: The Crusade for
Freedom in America(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1961). See also
Betty L. Fladeland, “Revisionists vs. Abolitionists: The Historiographical Cold War
of the 1930s and 1940s,” Journal of the Early Republic6 (1986), 1-21; Merton
Dillon, “Gilbert H. Barnes and Dwight L. Dumond: An Appraisal,” Reviews in
American History XXI (1993): 539-52.
11- See Aileen S. Kraditor, Means and Ends in American Abolitionism: Garrison
and His Critics on Strategy and Tactics, 1834-1850 (1967; Chicago: Ivan R. Dee,
1989), 3-38; James Brewer Stewart,
Holy Warriors: the Abolitionists and American Slavery(New York: Hill and Wang,
1976); McPherson, Struggle for Equality; James Brewer Stewart, “The Aims and
Impact of Garrisonian Abolitionism, 1840-1860,” Civil War History15 (1969), 197209; James Brewer Stewart, “Peaceful Hopes and Violent Experiences: The
Evolution of Reforming and Radical Abolitionism, 1831- 1837,” Civil War
History17 (1971), 293-309; Staughton Lynd, Intellectual Origins of American
Radicalism(New York: Pantheon, 1968).
12- Gilbert Barnes, Anti-Slavery Impulse. See also Anne C. Loveland,
"Evangelicism and Immediate Emancipation."
13- Douglass,1978, pp. 77-78.
14 - ibid
15- Douglass,1978
16- Wright, 1993, p.75
17- Ibid.
16
Radical Abolitionism through Self revelation…
Revue n° 19
- Stewart, James Brewer. “Peaceful Hopes and Violent Experiences:
The Evolution of Reforming and Radical Abolitionism, 18311837,” Civil War History.17 1971, Stockdale, Opposite BurlingtonHouse, 1787.
- Zahler, Helene,. Eastern Workingmen.London,1977.
1 - Jefferson, “The Declaration of Independence” p.1.
2- Ibid.
3 -Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia(London, John Stockdale,
Opposite Burlington-House, 1787), 137.
4 - Ibid.
5 - Ibid, 143.,
6 -Ibid.
7 - To summarize an extremely complex story, the scandal is that Thomas Jefferson
had a relationship with one of his slaves named Sally Hemings, who was ¼ African
American, and fathered six children with her. One of these children died at the age
of two and there is a lack of information on the third oldest child, but the other four
were freed in some fashion by Jefferson. William Beverly, the second oldest child,
ran away from Monticello in 1822, and unlike what most owners would do,
Jefferson did not pursue him. Harriet, the fourth oldest child, left Monticello in 1822
as well, “with the aid of Jefferson”. The last two, Madison and Eston, were freed in
Jefferson’s will in 1826.
But, evidence seems to suggest that this was an isolated incident. Take the purposed
reason Jefferson freed these slaves. It is believed by some that “Jefferson promised
her that he would free all of her children when they reached the age of twenty one if
she would agree to return to the United States with him [from France in 1789]”. This
seems to suggest that Jefferson only released the children because of some
agreement made with the woman considered to be his lover after the death of
Martha. The other major evidence is one of the main arguments against the
possibility that this scandal is true, that Jefferson was a devout and loving father to
his children with Martha.
8- “New Organization,” Herald of Freedom, rept., Liberator, 8 May 1840.
9- See Julie Roy Jeffrey, Abolitionists Remember: Antislavery Autobiographies and
the Unfinished Work of Emancipation(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press, 2008).
15
Radical Abolitionism through Self revelation…
Revue n° 19
- Douglas, Fredrik. the Life of F. Douglass, 1978.
- Fladeland, Betty L. “Revisionists vs. Abolitionists: The
Historiographical Cold War of the 1930s and 1940s,” Journal of
the Early Republic. 1986.
- James, Brewer Stewart, “The Aims and Impact of Garrisonian
Abolitionism, 1840-1860,” Civil War History . 1969
Jefferson, Thomas, “The Declaration of Independence” .
-………………., Notes on the State of Virginia. London, John
- Jeffrey, Julie Roy. Abolitionists Remember: Antislavery
Autobiographies and the Unfinished Work of Emancipation.Chapel
Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008.
-Hofstadter, Richards, Leonard. Gentlemen of Property and Standing.
London 1987.
-Hofstadter, Richard. American Political Tradition. Newyork. 1999
-Herald of Freedom “New Organization,” rept., Liberator, 8 May
1840.
- Kraditor, Aileen S. Means and Ends in American Abolitionism:
Garrison and His Critics on Strategy and Tactics 1834-1850. 1967;
Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1989.
- Kraditor, Means and Ends. London, 1988.
- Lewis Perry, Radical Abolitionism.
-Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., "Note on the Text," pp
407-8 in Richard Wright, Black Boy (American Hunger), the
Library of America, 1993.
Lynd, Staughton. Intellectual Origins of American Radicalism .New
York: Pantheon, 1968.
- Loveland, Anne C., "Evangelicism and Immediate Emancipation."
- Nye, Russell B. Fettered Freedom. Newyourk, 1987.
- Quarles, Benjamin. Black Abolitionists. London 1967.
Stewart, James Brewer. Holy Warriors: the Abolitionists and
American Slavery .New York: Hill and Wang, 1976.
- Pherson, Mc. Struggle for Equality. New York: Hill and Wang,
1987.
14
Radical Abolitionism through Self revelation…
Revue n° 19
cause a psychological defeat and then lead to a call for a radical
change in society.
Conclusion
Finally we can say that Abolitionism in the American society is
deeply rooted in the American ideals of liberty, equality, and justice. It
is also originated in the principles of the American government as set
in the declaration of independence. It was one of the self evident
truths since it calls for a natural right of the individual .American
abolitionists deserved the term radical because they sought to change
the American public opinion about the social institution of slavery and
they wanted to carry out a social change towards more democratic
lines. They were extremely successful in doing so. Abolitionists in the
USA provided a source for other radical movements that called for the
right of other social categories to enjoy the sacred ideals of American
democracy. Therefore, it is obvious thatself revelation has often been
a very appropriate literary way to convey the author’s radical thought
in American literature. Self revelation then was part of the great
process of the liberation of human personality in the American
society.
Bibliography
- Barnes, Gilbert Hobbs. The Antislavery Impulse, 1830-1844. New Y
Brown, Bertram Wyatt-, et al,. "Abolitionists and Irish Immigrants.
"ork: D. Appleton- Century, 1933.
- Davis, David Brion. The Problem of Slavery. Newyourk1965.
- Dawley, Class and Community. Newyork, 1967.
- Dillon, Merton. “Gilbert H. Barnes and Dwight L. Dumond: An
Appraisal,” Reviews in American History XXI (1993).
- Du Bois Ellen, Feminism and Suffrage.London1989.
- Dwight, Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America.
Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1961.
13
Radical Abolitionism through Self revelation…
Revue n° 19
gloom. This good spirit was from God, and to him I offer thanksgiving
and praise." 16
He shows how he, as a colored person, is deprived of his right to
be considered as respectable American citizen in a society that
pretends to apply social justice and protects the freedom and the
individual opinion of every citizen: If you give a nigger an inch, he
will take an ell. A nigger should know nothing but to obey his masterto do as he is told to do (ibid, p.78). In other words, Wright seems to
question the major principles upon which the American society is built
such as equality, freedom, justice and the pursuit of happiness. His
maternal grandfather is deprived of his mansion by a bureaucratic
error despite his brilliant career in the American navy and Dunt’s
husband is murdered by the whites only because he is proved to be
successful in his liquor business. Certainly, Wright did not choose to
narrate these experiences just haphazardly, but rather he was quite
aware that though those experiences might be personal they can
convey a very meaningful social message.
Wright also speaks about his mother and her role in educating
him and in giving him the energy to fight the whites and to stand a
faint to their humiliation. Here, Wright wants to refer to the role
played by the African American woman in protecting the Negro
culture. He portrays his mother as well as his grand mother as real
guardians of culture and tradition in the family:
My mother's suffering grew into a symbol in my mind, gathering
to itself all the poverty, the ignorance, the helplessness; the painful,
baffling, hunger-ridden days and hours; the restless moving, the futile
seeking, the uncertainty, the fear, the dread; the meaningless pain and
the endless suffering.17
What one can say about Black Boy as an autobiography is that it
has a continuing value because of its providing engaging ways for us
to know how our lives can be shaped by our race, gender, and even
our country and how the conflict between desire and hindrance can
12
Radical Abolitionism through Self revelation…
Revue n° 19
Douglas also speaks with a psychological bitterness about the
everlasting absence of his father. For sure, by informing the reader of
the gap left by the father, Douglas wants to end slavery as a social
system which always sends the father of the slave elsewhere in order
to disrupt the slave of family. Probably, Douglas wants here to suggest
that one of the major aims of slavery is to create a matriarchal slave
family in which the mother plays a major role and assumes all the
responsibilities. He is then, showing the social impact of slavery and
its far fetched aims at dismantling the trees among the slaves, so that
they can not be united and before can not struggle against the white
southerners.
3- Richard Wright’s Black Boy
In Richard Wright’s painful autobiography ‘Black Boy’; it is
obvious to the reader that Wright’s life although, less stable and more
fragmented than all the African Americans in the South, is
representative of the life in the American South and it can be taken as
a microcosm of the Negro life in twentieth Century America. In
writing his autobiography, Wright redefined two important episodes
of his life, his painful childhood and his experience and involvement
in the Communist Party as an intellectual adult. Wright was very
selective in narrating his past experiences concentrating more on those
that can represent the social life in the South, and used irony as a way
of critiquing the discriminatory society of America. In an attempt to
argue for antislavery ideology, Douglass attacks slavery as an
American social institution in his autobiography:
"From my earliest recollection, I date the entertainment of a
deep conviction that slavery would not always be able to hold me
within its foul embrace; and in the darkest hours of my career in
slavery, this living word of faith and spirit of hope departed not from
me, but remained like ministering angels to cheer me through the
11
Radical Abolitionism through Self revelation…
Revue n° 19
America? He provides a detailed description of life in the slave holder
‘s plantation and emphasizes more the relationship between himself
and his white master” Covey” who is portrayed as cruel and
domineering man whose major goal in life is to achieve material
success:
"But, alas! This kind heart had but a short time to remain such.
The fatal poison of irresponsible power was already in her hands, and
soon commenced its infernal work. That cheerful eye, under the
influence of slavery, soon became red with rage; that voice, made all
of sweet accord, changed to one of harsh and horrid discord; and that
angelic face gave place to that of a demon."13
For this reason, he despises the slaves and exploits them despite
their weakness. In Douglas’s autobiography, Covey can be considered
as an emblematic figure for slavery as a social and economic system
in America. To show the Negro dilemma in a white dominated
society, Douglas portrays a great deal of his social experiences that
can be taken as representatives of the social life of the African
American city in general for instance, in an early stage of life: Hunger
has always been more or less at my elbow when I played, but now I
began to wake up at night to find hunger standing at my bedside”14.
By narrating this psychological experience, Douglas wants
certainly to convey the idea that slavery as a social institution aims at
disrupting the ties among the slave family. He did not feel sad for
having lost his mother supply because from the very beginning of his
life, he did not get the habit of having her with him. So, that is why
her life or death is alike to him. Douglas, the child and Douglas be
going who has spent his time in the plantation that did not belong to
him and whose fruits went to the white slaveholder is without a
familial affiliation:
“I knew that I lived in a country in which the aspirations of
black people were limited, marked-off. Yet I felt that I had to go
somewhere and do something to redeem my being alive.”15.
10
Radical Abolitionism through Self revelation…
Revue n° 19
identifying slavery as a sin eliminated the possibility of compromise
with the South. 12
It is not surprising, therefore, that abolitionists tended to view
slavery in highly abstract and individualist terms. Slavery was an
exercise of authority forbidden by God; the central wrong was the
black's loss of the right of self-ownership, the transformation of a
human being into a thing. From this position, some abolitionists
moved to "non-resistance," denying the legitimacy of all coercive
relations in American society. Many, in addition, condemned existing
institutions for their complicity in the existence of slavery. What
Stanley Elkins calls the anti-institutionalism of abolitionists was, in
part, a conviction that slavery was so deeply embedded in American
life, that its abolition would require fundamental changes in other
institutions as well. To remove slavery, said Garrison, he was willing
to see every political party "torn by dissentions, every sect dashed to
fragments, the national compact dissolved." In its most extreme form,
then, abolitionism's stress on the autonomy of the individual could
lead, as Lewis Perry.
Slavery contradicted the central ideals and values of artisan
radicalism-liberty, equality, independence-and the founding fathers of
the movement, Thomas Paine and Robert Owen, had both been
opponents of slavery. In literature black writers sought to demonstrate
the contradiction between slavery and human rights through writing
their autobiographies Fredrick Douglas and Richard Wright were
outstanding writers who through self revelation tried to fight slavery
and argue for abolitionism.
2- Fredrick Douglas’ The Life of F .Douglass
In writing his life story, Frederick Douglass was concerned
more with the social implication of slavery in the American south. The
natural result of that was an autobiography that documents the social
life of the black community in a specific period of time and in a partial
place in the American nation. Frederic Douglass’s major aim was
certainly to dramatize the life of the Negro in a white dominated
society and probably to picture the nightmare of slavery in modern
9
Radical Abolitionism through Self revelation…
Revue n° 19
midst of the Civil Rights movement were instead more interested in
recovering a tradition of radicalism that stretched from abolitionists to
the New Left. Some historians agreed with Barnes and Dumond that
there were crucial differences between Garrisonians and the
mainstream but reversed their negative judgments on Garrison and his
agitational style. Indeed, many historians now agreed with Garrison
that political abolitionists had been forced to compromise their calls
for racial egalitarianism in order to make electoral gains in the fight
against slavery, thereby forfeiting the moral high ground held by
agitators who remained outside formal politics. Yet it is worth noting
that scholars who celebrated Garrisonian means and ends were not
significantly challenging earlier estimates of what counted as radical
abolitionism so much as they were advancing new estimations of what
radical abolitionism counted for. 11
The greatest of all the antebellum reform movements was, of
course, abolition. But it was not free from the conflicting tendencies
of the reform impulse in general, or from the problems of class
constituency reflected in the women's rights movement. Sentiment
against slavery was hardly new in the 1830s. It could be traced back to
the American Revolution and before. But prior to this decade, the
prevailing expression of antislavery was the American Colonization
Society, which proposed the gradual elimination of the South's
peculiar institution and the deportation of the freedmen to Africa.
(This policy was resisted by most leaders of the free black community,
although a few, like the early Black Nationalist Paul Cuffe, did
attempt to promote voluntary emigration to Africa.)
The 1830s witnessed a complete transformation in the crusade
against slavery. Drawing on the idea of perfectionism, abolitionists
abandoned the earlier gradualist approach and demanded immediate
emancipation. Essentially, as Gilbert Barnes noted many years ago,
immediatism was a call for repentance by the slaveholder for the sin
of slavery. Instead of a complex institution embedded in a web of
social institutions, slavery came to be viewed essentially as a moral
and religious question. "We believe slavery to be a sin, always,
everywhere, and only, sin-sin in itself," wrote William Lloyd
Garrison. Here lay the radicalism of the immediatist approach:
8
Radical Abolitionism through Self revelation…
Revue n° 19
question. In 1840, when the American Anti-Slavery Society splintered
into factions, Garrison and his allies claimed that only they
represented “radical abolitionism.”8 Garrison’s critics, like Lewis
Tappan, favored working through churches and electoral politics to
attack slavery, while Garrisonians refused to vote, labeled the
Constitution and most churches as proslavery, and welcomed
members of various reform movements into their societies. The
groups of abolutionists were inspired by a number of beliefs, ranging
from religious faith to liberalism. Their leaders and membership were
drawn from a wide variety of social classes, from the wealthy and
powerful to the poorest workers and farmers.
But even after the 1840 schism, “what counts as radical
abolitionism” was not really a live question: both Garrison and his
critics would have agreed that the answer was Garrisonism. Later,
however, political abolitionists and eventually some Republicans
claimed the term “radical” themselves; in 1855, for example, a
coalition that included Douglass formed a Radical Abolitionist Party
for a brief moment before the Civil War, then, “what counts as radical
abolitionism” was a comprehensible question about which some
abolitionists disagreed. But in retrospect, this moment was brief. After
the Civil War, abolitionists downplayed their differences, constructing
triumphal narratives that gave all factions important roles. Meanwhile,
reconciliationist narratives about the Civil War once again cast all
abolitionists as fanatics, little caring about differences. 9
These trends largely continued until the work of historians
Gilbert Barnes and Dwight Dumond beginning in the 1930s. In
contrast with Civil War “revisionists” who cast all abolitionists as
destructive nags, Barnes and Dumond rehabilitated abolitionists like
Theodore Dwight Weld and James Birney. But they did so by insisting
on the very distinction Tappanites and Liberty Party men drew
between themselves and “ultras” like Garrison. Rather than wondering
“what counts as abolitionism,” Barnes and Dumond took for granted
both that the answer was Garrisonism and that radicals were marginal
mischief-makers. 10
The next generation of abolitionist historians was less likely to
deem “radical” or “ultra” dirty words. Many scholars writing in the
7
Radical Abolitionism through Self revelation…
Revue n° 19
not have the abilities or mental capacity that the Caucasian race
posses. And he sees these differences escalating to race wars.
As a result, “this unfortunate difference in color, and perhaps of
faculty, is a powerful obstacle to the emancipation of these people”5.
So, while Jefferson states that he wants to emancipate, he does not see
it as a legitimate possibility. And the second reason this is not radical
is, to make matters worse, his solution to solving the race wars. If
emancipation did occur, it was necessary to “remove the freed slaves
beyond the reach of mixture” according to Jefferson6. His solution
was to send the freed slaves away, to eliminate them for American
society. How dismissing the chances of emancipation and sending
them off if emancipation were to occur can be construed as radical is
hard to see. And when one of the Founding Fathers thinks and acts as
Jefferson did, the radical nature of the American Revolution suffers in
regards to slavery.
There is though a retort to the assertion that the Founding
Fathers, including Jefferson, did not take radical steps regarding
emancipation. And the argument for Jefferson lies in his biggest
scandal, the story of Sally Hemings.7 This will lead us to wonder
“What counts as radical abolitionism?” and “ do the American
abolitionists really deserve the term” radical”?” The two questions
remained without a clear or consistent answer among historians.
Scholars now use the word “radical” to refer to many different kinds
of abolitionists, even those once considered moderates or barely
abolitionists at all, and some abolitionists seem to be considered more
radical than others. If “radical abolitionism” is not simply a redundant
phrase, then historians who use the term presumably have in mind
some answer to the question of what counts as radical. Yet that
question has rarely been explicitly asked.
In the abolitionists’ era, the majority of Americans viewed all
antislavery reformers as radicals-David Wilmot and Charles Sumner,
no less than Susan B. Anthony, William Lloyd Garrison, John Brown,
or Frederick Douglass. “What counts as a radical abolitionist” was
seldom asked because the answer was obvious: all of the above.
Abolitionists alone conceived of the issue as a multiple choice
6
Radical Abolitionism through Self revelation…
Revue n° 19
This would not have been an easy thing to do even in a
completely radical revolution because of how entrenched slavery was
in the American colonies. But, just because an immediate end to
slavery was unlikely does not mean that an eventual it would be
possible. The key is the no one tried to. People spoke of ending
slavery, of freeing the enslaved African Americans, but with few
exceptions no one did. And this fact alone detracts a great deal from
any argument that claims the American Revolution was a radical
revolution because it did not challenge slavery and as a result left a
group of people out 2.
To examine this idea that no one tried to end slavery it is
necessary to look no further than the leaders of the Revolution
themselves, the Founding Fathers. While many of the Founding
Fathers did not free their slaves after the Revolution (including
George Washington himself, who fought alongside African American
slaves} the Founder who most clearly demonstrates this lack of radical
action is Thomas Jefferson. While Jefferson was in favor of ending
slavery, he never did it himself (with one possible exception) and his
opinions on the issue are laced with contradictions. To see this, one
must examine one of Jefferson’s most famous works, Notes on the
State of Virginia.
Notes on the State of Virginia was published anonymously by
Jefferson in 1787 consisting of twenty one queries on the current
status of Virginia. The query that deals with Jefferson’s view on
slavery is number fourteen entitled “Laws”. In this query, Jefferson
proposes alterations to the laws of Virginia, one of which was to
“emancipate all slaves born after passing the act”3 While this does
seem like a radical idea, it is not for two major reasons. The first is the
way in which Jefferson treats African Americans.
Jefferson seemed to be a racist. He felt that the African
American race was below that of whites. He conveys this in his book
by saying things such as “blacks, whether originally a distinct race, or
made distinct by time and circumstance, are inferior to the whites in
the endowments both of body and mind”4ix. Blacks, according to
Jefferson, have always and will always be inferior to whites. They do
5
Radical Abolitionism through Self revelation…
Revue n° 19
&' ($ % .
! "# #
)* + &' ,$ - . &
/( #
0 %1 2 3 $ 4 * %51 . Introduction
By eliminating monarchy and hierarchy the Founders of the
USA were attempting to establish equal ground for the colonists. They
were attempting citizenship. But, in the Declaration of Independence
there is no mention of African American emancipation. There is no
mention of rights for black slaves or aim to establish citizenship for
them. The Declaration of Independence’s most famous line is “all
men are created equal”1 It should read all white males are created
equal.. African Americans were left out. African Americans could use
the American principles as set in the declaration of independence in
order to achieve egalitarianism in the American society. In this article
light shall be shed on how black writers contributed to fostering
radical abolitionism through self revelation as members of the
American black community.
1- Radical Abolitionism: Individual Freedom Confirmed
It is now necessary then to examine the outcomes of the
American Revolution. The new government that was set up at the
conclusion of the war is well documented and is easily see as radical.
And in the social sense, monarchy was eliminated and citizenship
established. It has already been determined that blacks were left out of
the aims, but what of the outcomes. The end of the American
Revolution obviously did not immediately end slavery. There was no
provision in any treaty that brought the practice of slave labor to an
end.
4
Radical Abolitionism through Self revelation…
Revue n° 19
Radical Abolitionism through Self
revelation in American Literature
HouriaMihoubi
M’sila University
Abstract
The major purpose of the article is to shed light on the
contribution of literature to the American abolitionist movement .The
article shall be an attempt to reveal the major roots of black
radicalism as well as the background of their ideological project and
radical movement in the American society .In fact, the Americans and
since the Revolution, have adopted a set of principles like the
necessity of applying justice, freedom, and equality that became later
the major ideals of the American society and that made the Americans
feel themselves exceptional in founding the true democratic society in
which every individual can enjoy freedom, equality ,and justice .The
abolitionist movement came out to apply the theory of the “self
evident truths” on the African American people. Black writers saw in
literature an appropriate tool to foster and argue for radical
abolitionism. Self revelation was a window through which the reading
public could feel the plight of the African Americans in the USA
society.
()*+,‫ا‬
,$ * &
/( # 6' % * 7 8* 9$ : ; 2 &' 0 - 2 * * $ $ < * 0 %1 = "# ( ! 0
, ! 8* &' >$ 9 : )*
3